


Fill in a Form

by oxymoronic



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Birthday, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 10:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Phil Coulson turns forty, and despite Clint's best efforts they don't get the birthday he has in mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fill in a Form

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarlingGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/gifts).



> Because she's truly wonderful and was having a bad day.
> 
> Originally inspired by _Thor_ , more precisely the moment he turns up at Jane's with Selvig over his shoulder, and I commented I could so imagine him doing that to Coulson sometime. I know the actors' ages are actually closer to forty & fifty, and I'm probably desecrating comic book canon, but in my mind Clint is c. 35 and Phil is c. 40. Title lifted from _When I'm 64_.
> 
> (You'll probably want to go put on a mouthguard or something, I'm pretty sure I need fillings after writing this.)

On what Phil wishes most to be an unremarkable day, he opens his eyes to see Clint lying inches away, a grin on his face and a truly evil look in his eye. He gives himself a handful of seconds to think it through, then promptly rolls back over onto his stomach with a long, miserable sigh and buries his face firmly into the pillow.  
  
“Oh, no you don’t,” he gets with an undoubtedly evil chuckle from somewhere behind him, and an agonizingly painful weight across the backs of his thighs informs him that Clint is not about to fuck off quite so easily. “Not on your _special day_. I was thinking flowers, and sex, and possibly breakfast, and then I’m going to take you _shopping_.” Clint is forced to stop talking as he latches his mouth to Phil’s neck instead, progresses along his shoulder with small, warm nips that potentially irritate him more than the talking. “C’mon, old man. I know it’s a big step, but I didn’t think you’d be comatose before fifty.”  
  
Phil swats him away with a well-judged slap to the neck and pushes himself free of the duvet, slumping back against the headboard with a sigh; Clint’s grin climbs to insufferable proportions, and he looks almost childish in the dim, warm light. He barely looks a day over thirty. Phil’s gut squirms, and he looks away. “JARVIS, open the curtains, would you?”  
  
“Certainly, sir,” is his reply.  
  
Clint’s face takes on a truly scandalized look. “No morning sex? Damn it, Phil, sleepy morning sex is the best goddamn thing about birthdays. I was going to bring you breakfast on a tray afterwards and _everything_.”  
  
Phil sends him a wry smile, running his eye along the innumerable suits flanking one side of the room. “Unless you swung me the day off work, I was meant to be in the office forty five minutes ago. And before you chew me out on that most of what’s waiting for me is paperwork you created.”  
  
“I tried with the whole day off thing for you. I even sucked Fury off a couple times,” Clint says with a smirk as he dresses. “But he pushed for more, and I couldn’t do it. I knew you’d go all possessive over me if I did.”  
  
“It’s not Fury I’m worried about,” Phil replies as he buttons his shirt, running his eye over his morning newsfeed, helpfully projected by JARVIS onto the windowpane. “More like HYDRA, and the frost giants, and Thor’s kid brother. Somehow I don’t think even you with your charming tongue and sexual prowess could persuade them to take the day off.” He glances over. “You decent? I want breakfast.”  
  
“As I’ll ever be,” Clint replies cheerily, and leads them from the room.  
  
It’s never an easy gamble to make as to who’ll be awake this time in the morning, though Tony is a rarity and generally only emerges in hours with single digits when he’s not slept the night before. This morning finds Natasha balanced up against the breakfast bar and Bruce with his head in the morning paper, a ridiculously domestic image that never fails to amuse him; Clint lunges for her the second they’re in the room in a half-hearted attempt to tackle her to the ground, and comes away with nothing more than a dead arm for his troubles. It’s almost as if he didn’t know better, didn’t try it every damn morning something wasn’t already being blown up, or sometimes in spite of the fact.  
  
He spends the next few minutes rubbing his war wound and grousing under his breath between death-glares in her direction, studiously ignored as ever. “Jesus, I feel like I’m at a funeral,” Clint mutters, glowering at the tabletop. “Are you two allergic to fun?”  
  
“Actually, I was going to throw a party popper at him when he walked in,” Natasha says, flipping channels on their ridiculously large television screen, “but I thought he’d probably confiscate it and give me a lecture on health and safety.” Phil maintains a studiously blank expression, but inside he’s enjoying a small, private smile.  
  
  
  
  
  
There’s no fuss made of him at the office, either, for which he is glad; a neat pile of cards has been dropped into his inbox, and during his short coffee break he opens them one by one, studiously makes a note of each sender, writes an early draft of his thank-you message. He’s no family left to call, and few friends outside the Mansion; although he knows the thought should depress him, he’s glad to be free of the stress of it, glad for it to be kept quiet, to be made a fuss of by those he cares for the most.  
  
_‘Tried to get Fury into a party hat,’_ Clint sends him just before lunchtime. _‘I nearly lost an eye.’_  
  
Phil smiles, keys off a quick message. _‘Just a party hat?’_  
  
_‘Phil Coulson, you’re a dirty bastard. I’m scandalized.’_ is his reply, moments later; this time of day Clint should be down in the archery range, but R &D are attacking his uniform once again and he’s probably sat on a bench somewhere in a vague state of dishabillé, bored out of his mind. Phil tries to sideline the thought and focus on memorandum compilation, but a few moments later and his phone chirps again: _‘Also hungry. Please at least have lunch with me.’_  
  
_‘Hunger is a sign of weakness, Barton. I thought we beat that out of you a long time back.’_ he replies, but pushes aside his work and gets to his feet, working the crick out of his neck. _‘Meet you out back in five.’_  
  
  
  
  
  
Their lunch takes less than half an hour, but not for the reasons Phil would like; halfway through a mouthful of burger and fries Clint’s phone makes a bright, ominous cheep, and Clint pauses his attempt at pilfering Phil’s fries and groans a long, low groan. “Seriously?”  
  
“Giant goat-spiders,” Phil says dryly as he flips open his own screen, eyebrow raised. “Two blocks away. Guess we’re still on call, Barton.”  
  
“I hate life,” Clint moans, lying back in his chair and rubbing his eyes, but he matches Phil’s sharp pace out of the diner and into the street beyond, and Phil can taste how with each step he picks up his armor of Hawkeye, assembles it within his mind.   
  
They’d left the bow in the back of Phil’s car (because they’d learnt from experience that sporting something like that in the real world earns you at best a wide berth and at worst a night in the cells), but Hawkeye’s main kit is back at HQ, a long and rather unnecessary drive away. Phil glances down at his phone, still urgently buzzing away; there’s the faint taste of screams on the air, emanating from not far away. “How are you for gear?”  
  
Clint’s hand reaches for the neck of his shirt. “I’ve got an old set on underneath that should work.” He quirks an eyebrow. “If, you know, you can keep off jumping me for long enough for me to do the Superman thing.”  
  
Phil sends him a long look. “I’m sure I’ll manage.”  
  
They’re greeted at the scene by a handful of SHIELD operatives assembled on a rooftop nearby and an Avenger or two; he can see Natasha darting among the fallen masonry that litters the usually peaceful suburban street, and Tony hovering above her, looking guilty even when encased in iron; Phil guesses the chunks of brick and mortar might have more to do with him than the creatures flitting about the streets below. Phil mounts the fire escape to join his fellow agents on the rooftop, whilst Clint slips away, a look of quiet focus in his eyes as he quickly scouts out the area.  
  
“Stark was a little overzealous with the ammo, I see,” he says to a nearby agent when he reaches the top – Carter, he thinks, tall woman, dark, hard eyes. She nods, quirks an eyebrow, as if to ask _when isn’t he?_ , and Phil shakes his head, sighs a long sigh. He activates the comms unit she hands him, feels his brain kick up a gear, his blood and bones come alive. “You done destroying civilian habitation, Iron Man?”  
  
_“In my defense there was a monster on it. I thought he’d try and eat some babies.”_  
  
“These things aren’t monsters, agent, they’re escaped lab rats. Try to neutralize rather than slaughter. I know it’s not your style.”  
  
_“I’m not your agent, Coulson,”_ is his sarky reply, but Tony drops down to ground level and starts hauling chunks of broken building to try and build a dam, try and contain the epicenter of the crawling, bleating mass beneath him.  
  
_“Christ, give me frost giants any day,”_ Clint mutters; Phil snatches a glance of him through a four-storey window, his eye on the street below. _“You want me down there shepherding too, sir?”_  
  
“Stay in the skies, Hawkeye. I might still need you.”  
  
_“Why sir, I never knew you cared,”_ Clint replies with a deliberate cant to his voice, a light lisp.  
  
Phil restrains from rolling his eyes, gestures at the agent nearest to his side. “Are we nearly done with this?”  
  
“We’ve got most of them pinned in the street below, sir,” the man replies, not glancing up from the live feed he’s reading on the device in front of him. “We’ve already dispatched teams to pick up the few that broke free. The guys from FRAT are already en route.”  
  
“Excellent. Pull up the property info on this building and bill Stark Industries for whatever repair needs doing, and get me a list of civilian witnesses, we’ll need to debrief – ”  
  
A sharp, low _crack!_ cuts him off, followed by a deep, long boom that rattles his kneecaps, jangles his teeth inside his head, and he looks over just in time to see the front half of the nearby apartment block cleave neatly in two and come crashing to the ground. An apartment block which, minutes before, had contained Clint Barton.  
  
“Get him out,” he hears himself saying, both loud and demanding and yet far away, muffled by the thick roar of his pulse, his heart lodged somewhere in his throat – he’s over by the side of the roof, pressed up against the rail, his eyes scouring the lumpen mass of building at his feet, his ears ringing sharply in the aftermath of the explosion, the panicked, pained sounds of the creatures in the street below clattering raucously around him. “Someone, get in there and _get him out of there_ – ”  
  
Natasha darts into the pile the second she hits it, and a few long, slow decades pass before he hears her say – _“He’s here. Alive, but pinned. His comms are down, but sir, you’ll be relieved to know he’s as loudmouthed as usual.”_  
  
Phil lets out a long, slow breath, allows himself a shudder to shake out the fear curling up in his gut. “Stark, if that was _anything_ to do with you – ”  
  
_“No fair,”_ Tony interrupts with a whine. _“I was rounding up your fucking spidersheep when it happened, don’t blame me. Seriously, every time something explodes in this goddamn city people point the finger at Iron Man.”_  
  
_“I’ve got him free, sir,”_ Natasha interjects as they resoundingly ignore Tony, “ _but I’d rather not pull him out til the medic crews get here. Do we have an ETA?”_  
  
Phil glances across at his team; Carter holds up two fingers. “Two minutes,” he promises, eyeing the pile of rubble, his nerves still jangling unpleasantly. As much as he wants to be down there, as much as he wants to flip off that rubble with his bare hands and pull Clint close to him hard and tight, for the sake of the Avengers’ working environment Phil has to keep his attitude strictly professional when they’re in the field – and with any other Avenger he’d sit up here, he’d wait, he’d let the medic crews in to do their thing and wait for his agent’s sit-rep to be fed back to him by those who know better.  
  
He presses his palm into the cool metal of the rail, closes his eyes, and feels every one of his forty years.  
  
  
  
  
  
Clint’s old suit saves him from the worst of the damage, though the new suit would have caused him to feel it less. Considering he just had a building fall on him he’s remarkably okay – scrapes, bruises, a cracked rib or two, but he’s spent the last thirty years perfecting his technique, has got damn good at taking a fall; that, and as he fell he let loose a grappling line to the building across the street, slowing his fall and meaning that by the time he hit the ground most of the building had already fallen beneath him. With any other man Phil would doubt his ability to manage all of that in less than a heartbeat; but if there’s one thing Clint Barton’s always been, it’s quick on his feet.  
  
That, and annoyingly stubborn. “You’re not spending the rest of your birthday watching me rot in a hospital bed,” Clint grouses from where he lies, sending Phil a hot scowl. “They’ve even said they’ll dispatch me in a couple hours, but by the time I get out of here it’ll officially already be tomorrow and we’ll have wasted the whole goddamn day. Seriously, I’m not in any pain, I’m high as a kite from all these meds, and I’ll be bouncing off the walls until they let me go. Go and have some _fun_ , god damn you.”  
  
Phil glares at him. “I don’t want to get drunk, Barton. I want to take you home, write this whole ridiculous incident up, and go to bed.”  
  
Clint smirks, farcically licks his lips. “If we skip the paperwork I could get down with that idea.” Phil rolls his eyes. “Look, I thought you’d pussy out on the bar idea, so I recruited in a little help to help push the matter a little.”  
  
Phil’s face drops. “You didn’t,” he mumbles, jumping to his feet, and just as he does the door ricochets into the wall behind, almost taking it off its hinges, slammed back at full force by an overwhelmingly enthusiastic Thor.  
  
“Son of Coul!” Thor booms, arms outstretched, grin attempting to match their width. “Tonight we feast at the celebration of your birth! Clint has been most informative in detailing the typical events of a Midgardian evening!”  
  
Phil sends him a truly terrifying look; Clint shrugs, and smiles, though it’s utterly wicked in style. “Thor,” Phil begins slowly, raising his hands, but he’s already advancing across the room, clamping one enormous hand on his shoulder, his eyes as bright as suns.  
  
“We shall make merry, son of Coul!” he adds, and although Phil pushes back against him with all his strength he might as well have been prodding him with a feather. Even as he’s being led merrily down the winding hospital corridors, he catches the unmistakable cackle of Clint behind him, reverberating cheerfully along the walls, and Phil swears blind he’s going to kill the guy.  
  
  
  
  
  
As predicted, it’s well into the small hours before Clint’s back where he wants to be, a little battered and bruised but mostly just exhausted, prodded and poked and tested in more ways than he’d dared to imagine. He pads quietly around their set of rooms, pausing every once in a while to test out some muscle or another, wince at the spike of pain, check his movements and relearn how he has to work around his injury this time.  
  
He pulls up the debriefing report by Agent Carter and reads it through, if only to kill time. Apparently, one of the adorable little lab rats had got into the building, and Tony’s blaster had ignited a gas leak left in its wake; so not entirely Stark’s fault. Although he’s not usually one for diving in and taking grievous bodily injury in the line of duty, a little part of Clint is glad it was him inside that building and not the handful of families that usually occupied it, kids and all. Or Phil, he decides, his blood running cold. He’s glad it wasn’t Phil.  
  
He eyes the pile of presents lying to one side, amassed over the last couple months, discreetly and neatly wrapped in preparation for tonight. He can give them to Phil tomorrow; the Avengers lifestyle hardly allows them to stand on ceremony with such things. Still, he thinks wryly, it would have been nice to give him a proper, normal birthday.  
  
Three booming knocks at his door shake him from his rêverie, and there’s only one person on the planet who knocks like that; he gets to his feet, shakes a little of the tiredness from his limbs and goes to answer the door.  
  
Thor beams at him the moment he opens it, and it takes him a moment to realize the shapeless, groaning mass slung across his shoulder is _Phil Coulson_. Clint’s jaw drops. “What did you _do_?”  
  
“We drank, we fought, he made his ancestors proud,” Thor replies, and although his tone is somewhat quietened in acknowledgment of the hour it’s still loud enough that Clint thinks his teeth might be rattling. “Shall I bring him in?”  
  
“Sure,” Clint replies a little dumbly, stepping aside and gesturing through at the bedroom. He walks a step behind as Thor carries him through, whistling something merry under his breath. “Just, uh, dump him on the bed, I’ll see to the rest.”  
  
Thor claps him on the shoulder, and the shock through his injured body makes him wince. “It was a most entertaining evening,” he proclaims, a sage look on his face. “I was disappointed you could not join us. Now, I must rest, for I am not as young as I would like to be; I wish you goodnight, young sir.”  
  
“Night,” Clint says weakly after him, eyebrow raised, and is rewarded by a slam of the door he’s pretty sure makes his eardrums burst. He looks down at the heaped mess on the bed and swallows back a laugh. “JARVIS, could you drop the lights?”  
  
“Certainly, sir,” it replies, and the lights dim out to black. He works his way up Phil’s body, tugging free the shoes, trousers, shirt, stripping away the neatly concealed weaponry, the well-fitting armor. He manhandles him into the recovery position and places a glass of water and a bucket by the bed before walking to the bathroom to clean his teeth and down a few more pain meds.  
  
Phil stares up blearily at him when he returns to the room, and Clint laughs, shaking his head. “You’re pathetic, old man,” he teases, climbing onto the bed, and Phil mutters something jumbled and inarticulate, burrowing forward against his warmth; it makes something swoop in Clint’s stomach. He rolls his eyes, mouth still caught in a small smile, and lets him push in close. “I’m warning you now, If you throw up on these sheets I think Tony might kill you.”  
  
“Go to sleep, Barton,” Phil slurs into his collarbone, and Clint smiles and closes his eyes.


End file.
